Dynamic Earth

📌 Science centre in Old Town, City of Edinburgh
★★★★

Underneath the great volcanic prow of Salisbury Crags in central Edinburgh, the striking white tent forming the shell of Dynamic Earth is in a fitting location for an all-age attraction explaining the processes which shaped our planet Earth. It’s certainly not a stuffy old museum: this was a venue developed for the new millennium as an interactive, multi-sensory experience. You start by travelling back to the Big Bang in a Deep Time Machine, after which a series of partly guided, high-tech zones take the visitor forward through time and space, up to the different world biomes of the present day. A 360° cinema show completes the offering. The ticket price isn’t cheap and it’s not somewhere you can spend a whole day – the different zones have to be explored in order, so you can’t easily re-visit sections once you’ve moved on to the next room – but it certainly merits a visit if you have children or a passing interest in geology. Allow a couple of hours.